Cool Air

H.P. Lovecraft

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Cool Air

You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver more than others upon
entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild
autumn day. There are those who say I respond to cold as others do to a bad odour, and I am the last to deny the
impression. What I will do is to relate the most horrible circumstance I ever encountered, and leave it to you to judge
whether or not this forms a suitable explanation of my peculiarity.

It is a mistake to fancy that horror is associated inextricably with darkness, silence, and solitude. I found it in
the glare of mid-afternoon, in the clangour of a metropolis, and in the teeming midst of a shabby and commonplace
rooming-house with a prosaic landlady and two stalwart men by my side. In the spring of 1923 I had secured some dreary
and unprofitable magazine work in the city of New York; and being unable to pay any substantial rent, began drifting
from one cheap boarding establishment to another in search of a room which might combine the qualities of decent
cleanliness, endurable furnishings, and very reasonable price. It soon developed that I had only a choice between
different evils, but after a time I came upon a house in West Fourteenth Street which disgusted me much less than the
others I had sampled.

The place was a four-story mansion of brownstone, dating apparently from the late forties, and fitted with woodwork
and marble whose stained and sullied splendour argued a descent from high levels of tasteful opulence. In the rooms,
large and lofty, and decorated with impossible paper and ridiculously ornate stucco cornices, there lingered a
depressing mustiness and hint of obscure cookery; but the floors were clean, the linen tolerably regular, and the hot
water not too often cold or turned off, so that I came to regard it as at least a bearable place to hibernate till one
might really live again. The landlady, a slatternly, almost bearded Spanish woman named Herrero, did not annoy me with
gossip or with criticisms of the late-burning electric light in my third-floor front hall room; and my fellow-lodgers
were as quiet and uncommunicative as one might desire, being mostly Spaniards a little above the coarsest and crudest
grade. Only the din of street cars in the thoroughfare below proved a serious annoyance.

I had been there about three weeks when the first odd incident occurred. One evening at about eight I heard a
spattering on the floor and became suddenly aware that I had been smelling the pungent odour of ammonia for some time.
Looking about, I saw that the ceiling was wet and dripping; the soaking apparently proceeding from a corner on the side
toward the street. Anxious to stop the matter at its source, I hastened to the basement to tell the landlady; and was
assured by her that the trouble would quickly be set right.

“Doctair Muñoz,” she cried as she rushed upstairs ahead of me, “he have speel hees chemicals. He ees too seeck for
doctair heemself — seecker and seecker all the time — but he weel not have no othair for help. He ees vairy queer in
hees seeckness — all day he take funnee-smelling baths, and he cannot get excite or warm. All hees own housework he do
— hees leetle room are full of bottles and machines, and he do not work as doctair. But he was great once — my fathair
in Barcelona have hear of heem — and only joost now he feex a arm of the plumber that get hurt of sudden. He nevair go
out, only on roof, and my boy Esteban he breeng heem hees food and laundry and mediceens and chemicals. My Gawd, the
sal-ammoniac that man use for keep heem cool!”

Mrs. Herrero disappeared up the staircase to the fourth floor, and I returned to my room. The ammonia ceased to
drip, and as I cleaned up what had spilled and opened the window for air, I heard the landlady’s heavy footsteps above
me. Dr. Muñoz I had never heard, save for certain sounds as of some gasoline-driven mechanism; since his step was soft
and gentle. I wondered for a moment what the strange affliction of this man might be, and whether his obstinate refusal
of outside aid were not the result of a rather baseless eccentricity. There is, I reflected tritely, an infinite deal
of pathos in the state of an eminent person who has come down in the world.

I might never have known Dr. Muñoz had it not been for the heart attack that suddenly seized me one forenoon as I
sat writing in my room. Physicians had told me of the danger of those spells, and I knew there was no time to be lost;
so remembering what the landlady had said about the invalid’s help of the injured workman, I dragged myself upstairs
and knocked feebly at the door above mine. My knock was answered in good English by a curious voice some distance to
the right, asking my name and business; and these things being stated, there came an opening of the door next to the
one I had sought.

A rush of cool air greeted me; and though the day was one of the hottest of late June, I shivered as I crossed the
threshold into a large apartment whose rich and tasteful decoration surprised me in this nest of squalor and seediness.
A folding couch now filled its diurnal role of sofa, and the mahogany furniture, sumptuous hangings, old paintings, and
mellow bookshelves all bespoke a gentleman’s study rather than a boarding-house bedroom. I now saw that the hall room
above mine — the “leetle room” of bottles and machines which Mrs. Herrero had mentioned was merely the laboratory of
the doctor; and that his main living quarters lay in the spacious adjoining room whose convenient alcoves and large
contiguous bathroom permitted him to hide all dressers and obtrusively utilitarian devices. Dr. Muñoz, most certainly,
was a man of birth, cultivation, and discrimination.

The figure before me was short but exquisitely proportioned, and clad in somewhat formal dress of perfect cut and
fit. A high-bred face of masterful though not arrogant expression was adorned by a short iron-grey full beard, and an
old-fashioned pince-nez shielded the full, dark eyes and surmounted an aquiline nose which gave a Moorish touch to a
physiognomy otherwise dominantly Celtiberian. Thick, well-trimmed hair that argued the punctual calls of a barber was
parted gracefully above a high forehead; and the whole picture was one of striking intelligence and superior blood and
breeding.

Nevertheless, as I saw Dr. Muñoz in that blast of cool air, I felt a repugnance which nothing in his aspect could
justify. Only his lividly inclined complexion and coldness of touch could have afforded a physical basis for this
feeling, and even these things should have been excusable considering the man’s known invalidism. It might, too, have
been the singular cold that alienated me; for such chilliness was abnormal on so hot a day, and the abnormal always
excites aversion, distrust, and fear.

But repugnance was soon forgotten in admiration, for the strange physician’s extreme skill at once became manifest
despite the ice-coldness and shakiness of his bloodless-looking hands. He clearly understood my needs at a glance, and
ministered to them with a master’s deftness; the while reassuring me in a finely modulated though oddly hollow and
timbreless voice that he was the bitterest of sworn enemies to death, and had sunk his fortune and lost all his friends
in a lifetime of bizarre experiment devoted to its bafflement and extirpation. Something of the benevolent fanatic
seemed to reside in him, and he rambled on almost garrulously as he sounded my chest and mixed a suitable draught of
drugs fetched from the smaller laboratory room. Evidently he found the society of a well-born man a rare novelty in
this dingy environment, and was moved to unaccustomed speech as memories of better days surged over him.

His voice, if queer, was at least soothing; and I could not even perceive that he breathed as the fluent sentences
rolled urbanely out. He sought to distract my mind from my own seizure by speaking of his theories and experiments; and
I remember his tactfully consoling me about my weak heart by insisting that will and consciousness are stronger than
organic life itself, so that if a bodily frame be but originally healthy and carefully preserved, it may through a
scientific enhancement of these qualities retain a kind of nervous animation despite the most serious impairments,
defects, or even absences in the battery of specific organs. He might, he half jestingly said, some day teach me to
live — or at least to possess some kind of conscious existence — without any heart at all! For his part, he was
afflicted with a complication of maladies requiring a very exact regimen which included constant cold. Any marked rise
in temperature might, if prolonged, affect him fatally; and the frigidity of his habitation — some 55 or 56 degrees
Fahrenheit — was maintained by an absorption system of ammonia cooling, the gasoline engine of whose pumps I had often
heard in my own room below.

Relieved of my seizure in a marvellously short while, I left the shivery place a disciple and devotee of the gifted
recluse. After that I paid him frequent overcoated calls; listening while he told of secret researches and almost
ghastly results, and trembling a bit when I examined the unconventional and astonishingly ancient volumes on his
shelves. I was eventually, I may add, almost cured of my disease for all time by his skillful ministrations. It seems
that he did not scorn the incantations of the mediaevalists, since he believed these cryptic formulae to contain rare
psychological stimuli which might conceivably have singular effects on the substance of a nervous system from which
organic pulsations had fled. I was touched by his account of the aged Dr. Torres of Valencia, who had shared his
earlier experiments and nursed him through the great illness of eighteen years before, whence his present disorders
proceeded. No sooner had the venerable practitioner saved his colleague than he himself succumbed to the grim enemy he
had fought. Perhaps the strain had been too great; for Dr. Muñoz made it whisperingly clear — though not in detail —
that the methods of healing had been most extraordinary, involving scenes and processes not welcomed by elderly and
conservative Galens.

As the weeks passed, I observed with regret that my new friend was indeed slowly but unmistakably losing ground
physically, as Mrs. Herrero had suggested. The livid aspect of his countenance was intensified, his voice became more
hollow and indistinct, his muscular motions were less perfectly coordinated, and his mind and will displayed less
resilience and initiative. Of this sad change he seemed by no means unaware, and little by little his expression and
conversation both took on a gruesome irony which restored in me something of the subtle repulsion I had originally
felt.

He developed strange caprices, acquiring a fondness for exotic spices and Egyptian incense till his room smelled
like a vault of a sepulchred Pharaoh in the Valley of Kings. At the same time his demands for cold air increased, and
with my aid he amplified the ammonia piping of his room and modified the pumps and feed of his refrigerating machine
till he could keep the temperature as low as 34 degrees or 40 degrees, and finally even 28 degrees; the bathroom and
laboratory, of course, being less chilled, in order that water might not freeze, and that chemical processes might not
be impeded. The tenant adjoining him complained of the icy air from around the connecting door, so I helped him fit
heavy hangings to obviate the difficulty. A kind of growing horror, of outre and morbid cast, seemed to possess him. He
talked of death incessantly, but laughed hollowly when such things as burial or funeral arrangements were gently
suggested.

All in all, he became a disconcerting and even gruesome companion; yet in my gratitude for his healing I could not
well abandon him to the strangers around him, and was careful to dust his room and attend to his needs each day,
muffled in a heavy ulster which I bought especially for the purpose. I likewise did much of his shopping, and gasped in
bafflement at some of the chemicals he ordered from druggists and laboratory supply houses.

An increasing and unexplained atmosphere of panic seemed to rise around his apartment. The whole house, as I have
said, had a musty odour; but the smell in his room was worse — and in spite of all the spices and incense, and the
pungent chemicals of the now incessant baths which he insisted on taking unaided. I perceived that it must be connected
with his ailment, and shuddered when I reflected on what that ailment might be. Mrs. Herrero crossed herself when she
looked at him, and gave him up unreservedly to me; not even letting her son Esteban continue to run errands for him.
When I suggested other physicians, the sufferer would fly into as much of a rage as he seemed to dare to entertain. He
evidently feared the physical effect of violent emotion, yet his will and driving force waxed rather than waned, and he
refused to be confined to his bed. The lassitude of his earlier ill days gave place to a return of his fiery purpose,
so that he seemed about to hurl defiance at the death-daemon even as that ancient enemy seized him. The pretence of
eating, always curiously like a formality with him, he virtually abandoned; and mental power alone appeared to keep him
from total collapse.

He acquired a habit of writing long documents of some sort, which he carefully sealed and filled with injunctions
that I transmit them after his death to certain persons whom he named — for the most part lettered East Indians, but
including a once celebrated French physician now generally thought dead, and about whom the most inconceivable things
had been whispered. As it happened, I burned all these papers undelivered and unopened. His aspect and voice became
utterly frightful, and his presence almost unbearable. One September day an unexpected glimpse of him induced an
epileptic fit in a man who had come to repair his electric desk lamp; a fit for which he prescribed effectively whilst
keeping himself well out of sight. That man, oddly enough, had been through the terrors of the Great War without having
incurred any fright so thorough.

Then, in the middle of October, the horror of horrors came with stupefying suddenness. One night about eleven the
pump of the refrigerating machine broke down, so that within three hours the process of ammonia cooling became
impossible. Dr. Muñoz summoned me by thumping on the floor, and I worked desperately to repair the injury while my host
cursed in a tone whose lifeless, rattling hollowness surpassed description. My amateur efforts, however, proved of no
use; and when I had brought in a mechanic from a neighbouring all-night garage, we learned that nothing could be done
till morning, when a new piston would have to be obtained. The moribund hermit’s rage and fear, swelling to grotesque
proportions, seemed likely to shatter what remained of his failing physique, and once a spasm caused him to clap his
hands to his eyes and rush into the bathroom. He groped his way out with face tightly bandaged, and I never saw his
eyes again.

The frigidity of the apartment was now sensibly diminishing, and at about 5 a.m. the doctor retired to the bathroom,
commanding me to keep him supplied with all the ice I could obtain at all-night drug stores and cafeterias. As I would
return from my sometimes discouraging trips and lay my spoils before the closed bathroom door, I could hear a restless
splashing within, and a thick voice croaking out the order for “More — more!” At length a warm day broke, and the shops
opened one by one. I asked Esteban either to help with the ice-fetching whilst I obtained the pump piston, or to order
the piston while I continued with the ice; but instructed by his mother, he absolutely refused.

Finally I hired a seedy-looking loafer whom I encountered on the corner of Eighth Avenue to keep the patient
supplied with ice from a little shop where I introduced him, and applied myself diligently to the task of finding a
pump piston and engaging workmen competent to install it. The task seemed interminable, and I raged almost as violently
as the hermit when I saw the hours slipping by in a breathless, foodless round of vain telephoning, and a hectic quest
from place to place, hither and thither by subway and surface car. About noon I encountered a suitable supply house far
downtown, and at approximately 1:30 p.m. arrived at my boarding-place with the necessary paraphernalia and two sturdy
and intelligent mechanics. I had done all I could, and hoped I was in time.

Black terror, however, had preceded me. The house was in utter turmoil, and above the chatter of awed voices I heard
a man praying in a deep basso. Fiendish things were in the air, and lodgers told over the beads of their rosaries as
they caught the odour from beneath the doctor’s closed door. The lounger I had hired, it seems, had fled screaming and
mad-eyed not long after his second delivery of ice; perhaps as a result of excessive curiosity. He could not, of
course, have locked the door behind him; yet it was now fastened, presumably from the inside. There was no sound within
save a nameless sort of slow, thick dripping.

Briefly consulting with Mrs. Herrero and the workmen despite a fear that gnawed my inmost soul, I advised the
breaking down of the door; but the landlady found a way to turn the key from the outside with some wire device. We had
previously opened the doors of all the other rooms on that hall, and flung all the windows to the very top. Now, noses
protected by handkerchiefs, we tremblingly invaded the accursed south room which blazed with the warm sun of early
afternoon.

A kind of dark, slimy trail led from the open bathroom door to the hall door, and thence to the desk, where a
terrible little pool had accumulated. Something was scrawled there in pencil in an awful, blind hand on a piece of
paper hideously smeared as though by the very claws that traced the hurried last words. Then the trail led to the couch
and ended unutterably.

What was, or had been, on the couch I cannot and dare not say here. But this is what I shiveringly puzzled out on
the stickily smeared paper before I drew a match and burned it to a crisp; what I puzzled out in terror as the landlady
and two mechanics rushed frantically from that hellish place to babble their incoherent stories at the nearest police
station. The nauseous words seemed well-nigh incredible in that yellow sunlight, with the clatter of cars and motor
trucks ascending clamorously from crowded Fourteenth Street, yet I confess that I believed them then. Whether I believe
them now I honestly do not know. There are things about which it is better not to speculate, and all that I can say is
that I hate the smell of ammonia, and grow faint at a draught of unusually cool air.

“The end,” ran that noisome scrawl, “is here. No more ice — the man looked and ran away. Warmer every minute, and
the tissues can’t last. I fancy you know what I said about the will and the nerves and the preserved body after the
organs ceased to work. It was good theory, but couldn’t keep up indefinitely. There was a gradual deterioration I had
not foreseen. Dr. Torres knew, but the shock killed him. He couldn’t stand what he had to do — he had to get me in a
strange, dark place when he minded my letter and nursed me back. And the organs never would work again. It had to be
done my way — preservation — for you see I died that time eighteen years ago.”

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